The Flying Grey Warden wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...
The Flying Grey Warden wrote...
So why would a cure that only the templars know about and are allowed to enact, that was well regulated and would have the same stringent and heavily safeguard method of criteria that judging someone to be tranquiled would be employed, would lead to mass murder and the destruction of all things the circle holds dear.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Awkward syntax. I assume you were responding to me?
The Templars wouldn't be the only ones to know about it because the cured-Tranquil would also know, even if the Templars finished the cure in secret without the mages or divine knowing. Unless you intend to lock the cured Tranquil in solitary away from everyone else for all time, the news will get to the mages. Which, of course, would invite their own attempts to recreate: knowing something is possible is half the difficulty in creation, as a professor once told me.
The rest is a matter of simple crime. The Templars can be the only ones allowed to enact it, but it's irrelevant if the knowledge escapes their control. Just one mage with mind-control, chantry sympathizer, mundane theif, or Templar defector or corruption needs to be successful to leak the secret, and the maleficar networks can do the rest to preserve and spread the knowledge around. Given the potency of what's at stake, and the possible rewards, I wouldn't bet too much on it being a long-lived secret once people realize the Templars have it.
Once the knoweldge spreads, the Templar monopology can't be relied upon to prevent tranquil from being cured. That undermines the premise of letting people go Tranquil in the first place, and that in turn challenges the Harrowing. Changing the Harrowing by removing the third option is a scenario no one wants: either executions go up to compensate for the lack of Tranquility, or the quality of 'reliable' mages goes down as the prior tranquility candidates enter the mage pool.
Unintended consequence? Certainly. But second and third-order effects usually are.
You have a lot of ifs and ands that when applyed to dragon age sort of fall apart. Such as the harrowing, an act that every mage goes through, but doesn't tell anyone about, and nobody is decrying about how the harrowing will become public knowledge and lead to the apocolypse of the chantry system and all of thedas, which you seem to do. Nobody locks up the harrowed mages in isolated cells away from other mages and yet nobody blabs to the non-harrowed mages about what goes on either, so I think we'll be good on the secrecy department.
Er, what?
Mages know about the Harrowing. They also know about the alternatives: tranquility and death. The issue isn't the Harrowing becoming public knowledge: outside of the Circles, which already know, it won't matter. The issue is the impact on the Harrowing itself.
And the tranquiled aren't that common outside of the circle, not in the numbers that having a tranquility cure might cause a apocalypse. It would require maleficarum not only to know the secret, but have the neccisary tools needed to preform the ritual, and get their hands on just the right tranquiled that they can somehow use it to their advantage in some way that you don't even specify. What would happen if all the tranquiled who operated outside the circle were voluntary tranquiled? Have all the blood mage ones stay in the circle and preform the duties that the tranquilled do. Now you could argue that the maleficarum might infiltrate the circle, but if they have infiltrated the circle, what is going to be so much worse about them knowing how to reverse tranquility, in fact why would they do that when they can just assassinate the knight commander, or open a fade tear in the circle? Maleficarum infiltration is already dangerous regardless of knowing how to reverse tranquility or not, so that is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
Again, you're overstating my case in ways I wasn't. And you aren't even discerning the threat.
Apostates finding out about the secret and gathering the resources isn't unlikely. It might take some time, but the secret will emerge as soon as an anti-circle mage learns about the Cure (which will be obvious once the first Tranquil is reversed inside a circle that knows the restored mage was once tranquil). It is relatively trivial for the secret of the cure to get out, and the only way the Templars could prevent any from knowing about the Cure would be if they never used it and controlled the information about it's existence. Which they can't, because the mages and Chantry already were involved in creating it.
Gathering components is also hardly an insurmountable difficulty either. The player can help apostate rings in DAO who post requests on the chantry board, and smuggling controlled items (like lyrium and entire people) in and out of the Circles is known. Information and material leakage is to be expected.
Tranquil outside the Circles who are cured are an issue for the same reasons mages outside the Circle are an issue. The cure doesn't even have to be deliberate or voluntary on their part to raise the issue, since mage intent to be a threat has never been the reason why mages are so dangerous.
Maleficarum infiltration was never a crux of my argument, but the relative feasibility of smuggling information as oppossed to catastrophic damage would warrant it being a concern anyways.
Which really leaves only one possible threat, the tranquiled themselves. But not even that could be a threat as the tranquiled don't care about feeling again, or at least don't seem to want to. I doubt the tranquiled would go around, curing themselves left and right, even without being asked not to, because they would reason that they are already comfortable as they are and thus do not need alteration or reversion in order to feel good or complete. And even if a former tranquiled wanted to do that, he would still lack the neccisary resources needed, which would be under templar control IE lots of lyrium, to actually complete any such ritual. And if he turned to blood magic to try it you may ask? Well then treat him like any other blood mage, it's back to being tranquil with you. Sorry, you violated your parole.
Besides the disagreement with the starting premise, this rather stumbles into a misunderstanding of what Tranquility is used for. Tranquility is inflicted when people are deemed untrustworthy and intolerable by the Templars. These are already mages who would not be tolerated inside or out of the circles, and otherwise put to death... so what, pray tell, is the Templar reason for offering 'parole' to tranquility, aside from the some rare case of a post-conviction acquital?
And it'll change the harrowing? Seriously? You don't give evidence for why that would happen. You just blurt it out and expect us to accep it at face value.
Er... we're dealing with expected results of the future. Verbal and written analysis of choice structure is a huge part of that.
The Harrowing is a test everyone goes to, and thus, all people who have undergone it are aware of.
It has three possible outcomes: pass, fail and death, or tranquility. Templars tolerate tranquility because a tranquil will not be a target for demonic possession.
When tranquility is no longer reliable, such as the existance of a total cure that the Templars can not monopolize (as time progresses, all non-zero possibilities approach certainty) will remove the third dynamic. As tranquility becomes less and less reliable, the previous dynamic of life, death, and something between the two will become just life or death. Whether the Templars carry out the death or not, the balance is broken as either they do not execute those who would be made tranquil but now can not be expected to remain so, which leaves untrustworthy mages in the pool, or they do execute more mages and so garner more animosity.
That's game theory. That's what happens when you change systems like this.
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
and reading through the thread I do see the points you bring up. And you are right on how other companions manipulate Hawke. I guess I just saw Anders as the strongest personally, which is likely my reason for feeling he strikes me as the more manipulative of them all. Although, I do think about how he could potentially save Bethany/Carver in the Deep Roads (showing a more altruistic side), I'll give him that. Which is why there have been times I spared him. I do give credit where its due.
